A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

Ted Rall - El Busho & Trump - US President by Decree

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Al Cartoons by Ted Rall

I have had
two favourite editorial cartoonists in my life. One of them was the very
Mexican Abel Quezada. I wrote about him here and here. The other cartoonist
that I really like is a very left-wing American called Ted Rall. While he is a syndicated
cartoonist and writer I see his stuff on my on-line Washington Post. He is a delight.

As an
Argentine who served in the Marina de Guerra in the mid 60s I know what it is
like to live in a country where the next rank up of a four star general is
President of the Republic usually via a coup d’état. In fact I participated in
one (I obeyed orders or I would have been shot!) where our freely and honestly
elected president (a gentle country doctor) Arturo Illía whose term that began
on October 12, 1963 and ended abruptly (but gently as he went home in a taxi)
on June 28, 1966. I was with a contingent of the army, air force and the nave
that surrounded the Casa Rosada and gave him on hour to leave.

In
another previous cop attempt I remember being in the grandstands of the River
Plate football stadium watching a game. We heard some rumbling and we saw a long
string of tanks going into the city. We all ignored the event and went back to
watching the game.

Thus
with the latest pronouncements by Donald Trump on perhaps not accepting the
results of the November 8 elections and of his backers taking the streets to stop
a possible inaugural of Hillary Clinton I find myself in a world of magic
realism North of the equator. And when Trump says he would like to have his
presidency decreed I hyperventilate.

But my
fave cartoonist Ted Rall foresaw this years ago during George W. Bush’s
presidency. He featured Bush as El Busho (as a wolf, perhaps?) who with his epaulets (huevos fritos or fried eggs in my native Argentina) looked like the
very image of any South American military dictator that ever was.

Rall’s
cartoons may offend some but I believe that this is a good thing. It is
unfortunate that our own Vancouver Sun and other Canadian newspapers have never
discovered him. But I must point out that I loved Len Norris.